The spirits arriving for the feast were considerably more powerful than the little conscripted spirits doing chores for the mountain lord.
The first to arrive was a beauty draped in white gauze.
Her eyes half-lidded, hair flowing like a cloud, she moved with light, floating steps down the garden path and through the moon gate.
Ye Pengzhou whispered, “Little Immortal Maiden, let’s make a bet, guess what kind of spirit that is.”
Watching the way the female spirit moved so weightlessly, as though not walking but drifting, Fengxue said, “A bug, I’d guess. A spider.”
Ye Pengzhou said, “I’ll guess a white bone spirit.”
“Why?”
“Rouge and bone, beauty over a skeleton [1]deceptive beauty hiding something deadly jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3024838_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3024838_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });.”
A light breeze swept past, lifting the beauty’s white skirt just enough to reveal eight jet-black, bristle-covered limbs beneath.
Ye Pengzhou laughed. “The little Immortal Maiden wins again!”
The corner of Fengxue’s mouth lifted.
The spider spirit moved its eight legs gracefully through the moon gate and settled into a seat.
Next came a white-haired, white-bearded elder, hunched over, leaning on a cane.
Ye Pengzhou raised his brows. “And this one, what do you think?”
Fengxue said, “A tree spirit?”
Ye Pengzhou said, “This one I actually know, a ginseng spirit. Look, there’s a red thread tied around his wrist. Which pharmacy’s thousand-year ginseng root snuck off to come here?”
More monsters and ghosts trickled in one after another to join the feast.
Fengxue had seen no shortage of monsters in her past life, and Ye Pengzhou was quite well-traveled himself, between the two of them, they could correctly guess most creatures’ true forms.
Although surrounded by ghosts and monsters of every kind, neither of them felt particularly afraid.
The corner of Fengxue’s mouth curled up as she leaned slightly out from behind a pair of turtledove sisters, peering curiously through the moon gate.
The guests seemed mostly assembled now, surely this Lord Manshan would show himself soon.
This place wasn’t even all that far from Qingming Mountain, and yet it had somehow gathered such a crowd of monsters.
She couldn’t help feeling a flicker of surprise.
Disciples on the mountain went down whenever a request for help came in, slaying demons and clearing out monsters, and yet no matter how many they killed, there always seemed to be more.
Just how many monsters and ghosts were there in this world?
“Guests, please be seated,” the wild boar spirit boomed, pressing its two front hooves together. “Bring out the fine wine and delicious f-f-food—”
“Heh heh.” The old ginseng spirit stroked its beard and laughed. “Fare,’ you mean. Don’t go putting on airs like those pretentious folk down the mountain, little piglet. Just bring the food and drink, plain and simple.”
The boar spirit stopped fumbling over its words and waved a hoof, sending the little spirits outside the moon gate in with trays of food and drink.
The little spirits ahead of and behind Fengxue and Ye Pengzhou filed through the moon gate in a single line, carrying their wooden trays. The two of them, still wearing their veiled hats, picked up trays of fruit and vegetables and followed the procession of spirits inside.
The boar spirit stood at the gate like an iron tower, imposing and dignified.
Ahead of Fengxue walked a pair of lively turtledove sisters. They seemed to be on good terms with the boar spirit, because as they passed, it made a point of warning them: “Stay clear of the man in black once you’re inside. He loves eating birds.”
The turtledove sisters shivered in fright and said, “Thanks, Brother Piggy.”
Brother Piggy?
The corner of Fengxue’s mouth twitched up, and she nearly laughed. She managed to hold it back, but a soft snicker escaped from behind her instead.
“Who’s laughing?” The boar spirit’s ear twitched, the sparse black hairs on it standing up like steel needles.
By now only Fengxue and Ye Pengzhou were left at the back of the procession, with nowhere left to blend in.
The boar lowered its head and looked at the two of them.
Being so tall, they only came up to its waist.
“You two little spirits,” the boar said, its breath reeking with each word, its sickle-like tusks rising and falling as it spoke, “why are you so short? What kind of spirits are you?”
One large black hoof reached out toward Fengxue.
Just as she was about to react, Ye Pengzhou stepped forward instead, saying with a grin, “Brother Piggy, can’t you smell what we are?”
His voice, when he spoke, sounded remarkably like the dead weasel’s had.
The boar spirit sniffed a few more times. “Is that Yellow Thirteen and Yellow Fourteen? Why do you two smell like humans?”
Ye Pengzhou said with a laugh, “Well, we just tossed two nice fragrant little humans into the furnace, didn’t we?”
The boar spirit said, “Ah, right. The mountain lord sent you two off to help with the elixir, what are you doing here, then? Get back before you ruin his plans. Even if your own great-grandmother showed up, she couldn’t save you two, the mountain lord would toss you straight into the furnace himself!”
Fengxue thought to herself that this wouldn’t be necessary, the little weasels had already been tossed into the furnace, after all.
Ye Pengzhou, clearly a master of making things up on the spot, said, “The pill won’t be ready until mid-month. We’re keeping an eye on the time, we’ll head back the moment it’s due. Brother Piggy, let us in to see the fun, won’t you?”
The boar spirit thought it over for a moment, then nodded, its iron-tower body shifting slightly to let them pass.
Fengxue and Ye Pengzhou walked calmly through the moon gate.
Just as they stepped through, the boar spirit called out after them again. “Why’d you two get so short all of a sudden?”
Fengxue’s steps froze.
Ye Pengzhou said smoothly, “Isn’t this just us looking more human? Doing the mountain lord proud in front of all the other lords.”
Monsters ate people, but they were also endlessly devoted to cultivating human form.
Any spirit with a bit of real cultivation worked hard to make themselves look presentable and human. The more human a monster looked, the more respected it tended to be among its own kind.
The boar spirit let out a booming laugh. “Only you two would think to cut corners like that.”
Then, suddenly, it said, “Go on, lift your veils. Let me see how human you’ve managed to look.”
Fengxue and Ye Pengzhou froze.
Fengxue turned her head slightly to glance at the youth beside her. She had no idea what Ye Pengzhou was thinking, but at that moment, her own hand slipped into her sleeve, gripping an earth-escape talisman tight.
The boar spirit’s hoof reached toward them, meaning to tug their veils away.
Ye Pengzhou sidestepped, dodging the hoof, and before the boar could grow suspicious, he spun around and flipped up his robe, saying with a grin, “You old pig, I’m being polite here, and you keep dawdling. You want me to let one rip on you?”
The boar spirit had clearly suffered that particular indignity before, because it clapped a hoof over its snout and darted aside at once. “You fart in front of me now, and the mountain lord will skin you alive.”
Ye Pengzhou laughed heartily, grabbed Fengxue’s hand, and pulled her into the feast, ducking into a corner to observe quietly.
Fengxue said, “You really are shameless.”
Ye Pengzhou cracked open a melon seed from the tray and popped it into his mouth, saying with a grin, “These monsters are just a bit dim. Easy to fool.”
As they talked, a thin veil of black mist suddenly rose up from a distant pavilion. Threads of murky green and violet twisted through the mist, deeply unsettling.
The mist only rose once, but it dissipated again in an instant.
Something tightened in Fengxue’s chest. Whenever a great monster or great demon came into being, strange phenomena tended to follow, the sky splitting, the earth trembling, mountains crumbling…
For Lord Manshan to emerge with just a single wisp of black mist meant he had considerable power, power enough to wipe out a whole village with a wave of his hand.
But looking at that wisp of mist, it seemed to carry corpse qi, ghost qi, and demonic qi all at once, giving no clear sense of whether the mountain lord was a corpse, a ghost, or a monster.
Ye Pengzhou kept cracking his melon seeds. “Something twisted about that. Little Immortal Maiden, want some seeds?”
Fengxue shook her head. “You can eat something a monster’s touched?”
Ye Pengzhou said, “What’s wrong with that?”
Fengxue said quietly, “Haven’t you heard the story?”
“What story?”
Fengxue lowered her voice and began, slowly. “Once, in the northern borderlands, there was a brother and sister who lived with their grandmother on an isolated mountain. One day, the grandmother went down the mountain to visit relatives, telling the children to keep the doors and windows shut tight and not let any bad people in.”
“That night, a knock came at the door. The elder sister went to the door and asked, who’s knocking?”
“A voice outside answered: it’s your grandmother.”
“But the sister said, that’s not right. Grandmother, why does your voice sound so hoarse?”
“The voice outside answered: I scratched my throat eating one of those Cangzhou flatbreads.”
“The sister opened the door, and sure enough, there stood her grandmother. That night, the two of them slept together. Partway through the night, in her drowsy half-sleep, the sister heard a crunching, grinding sound, and asked, ‘Grandmother, Grandmother, what are you eating?”
“Grandmother answered: a Cangzhou flatbread.”
“The sister asked: why does a flatbread make such a loud noise?”
“Grandmother said: Cangzhou flatbreads are hard as stone, you know.”
“The sister begged: Grandmother, give me a little bite, won’t you?”
“There came a rustling sound, and then the grandmother passed the sister a small piece of the ‘flatbread.’ The sister felt it in her hand, sure enough, hard as could be. But why was it so wet? Just then, the moonlight shifted, slanting in through a crack in the wooden window, falling across the sister’s hand. Only then did she see clearly that what she held wasn’t any flatbread at all, it was her little brother’s bloodied finger. She turned to look, and what lay in the bed wasn’t her grandmother at all, but an old wolf wearing her grandmother’s clothes.”
Fengxue finished the story and looked at Ye Pengzhou.
Sure enough, the youth had stopped eating, setting the melon seeds in his hand back onto the wooden tray. After a moment, something clicked, and he said, “This story of yours… how does it end?”
The corner of Fengxue’s mouth lifted. “The sister beat the old wolf to death, and avenged her brother.”
Ye Pengzhou asked, “Beat it to death with what?”
Fengxue pressed her lips together.
Ye Pengzhou said, “Don’t tell me, an actual, genuine Cangzhou flatbread?”
Seeing her fall silent, he knew he’d guessed right, and laughed. “Goodness, whoever wrote that story must have really hated Cangzhou flatbread.”
The story’s actual ending had the sister pulling a flatbread out from under her pillow and smashing the wolf-grandmother dead with a single blow. As the story went, some southern scholar, tasting a Cangzhou flatbread for the first time, had choked on it and scraped his throat raw, so struck by the existence of a bread this rock-hard that he’d picked up his brush in outrage right then and there, combining it with the local legend of an old mountain wolf sneaking indoors to eat people, and cobbled together the tale of “Wolf Grandmother.”
Ye Pengzhou asked, “Little Immortal Maiden, is the flatbread where you’re from really that awful?”
Fengxue said, “Originally it was army rations, bread soldiers tucked into their robes on the march. It has to stay dry and hard to keep that long, that’s all.”
Ye Pengzhou laughed. “That scholar sounds awfully delicate, if a bit of bread could chip his teeth and inspire a whole story mocking your people over it.”
Fengxue said, “Well, it really can… The mountain lord’s here.”
The two of them stopped their idle chatter and watched the tower where the black mist had risen, on guard.
The monsters, who’d been chattering noisily over food and wine, fell quiet for a brief moment at the boar spirit’s announcement that Lord Manshan had arrived, a show of respect for the mountain lord.
Fengxue scanned the crowd.
The lesser-cultivated spirits went silent as mice at once, while the stronger ones behaved more naturally. Only three spirits ignored the mountain lord entirely and went on about their own business.
The spider spirit’s beautiful head stayed utterly expressionless, eyes half-lidded, even as the robe across her chest had come open, revealing eight eyes rolling and blinking beneath, a mouth opening and closing as it chewed steadily on the meat piled on the table.
That was its true head, the jade-white beauty’s face on top was probably some poor, lovely girl the vain creature had mounted there for decoration.
The man in black the boar spirit had specifically warned them about now had an arm around each of the turtledove sisters, holding them close. The two poor little birds trembled in fright, wings quivering nonstop, but the man kept them pinned firmly in his arms.
Like some romantic mortal playboy, he smiled and lifted the veil off one of the beauties.
The elder turtledove’s body went limp and collapsed, a moment later, only a pile of a woman’s gauze skirts remained on the ground.
The man’s mouth curved up, revealing a scarlet forked tongue, as he went on fondling the younger turtledove sister with obvious affection.
And the last figure sat alone at a table in the corner, quietly pouring and drinking his own wine. He wore a black veiled hat, his whole body wrapped in shadow, only a single pale hand visible as he poured.
Fengxue studied that hand for a long moment.
Slender fingers, distinct knuckles, it didn’t look like a monster’s hand at all.
Lord Manshan approached at last, surrounded by a crowd of lesser spirits.
Fengxue turned her attention to the host of the feast.
Lord Manshan was an elderly man with a ruddy, kindly face and a warm smile.
He leaned on a cane, his hair and beard white, his deep blue robe embroidered with cranes so lifelike they seemed on the verge of taking flight.
He didn’t look the least bit sinister, if anything, he carried a touch of the bearing of an immortal sage.
Lord Manshan greeted the assembled spirits with a smile and sat down. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, a round, tumbling figure hurried into the feast.
“Mountain Lord, Mountain Lord, I’m late!”
A round-faced, small-eyed, middle-aged man, his eyes crinkled with a smile, hugged a bundled parcel to his chest. “Fortunately, not too late. I’m honored to let the mountain lord try this century-aged brew I bought specially for you.”
Lord Manshan laughed. “Night Grinder, it’s been only a few days, what fortunate encounter did you have? You’ve cultivated to look so much more human now.”
“Indeed, indeed.” The man in black, sniffing at the younger turtledove sister, said, “Where’s that long black tail of yours gone?”
The man’s face twisted with pain. “What fortunate encounter, you say! While out gathering treasure for the mountain lord, I ran into some formidable swordswoman. She cut off my tail!”
Hearing this, Fengxue looked more closely at the man and thought, those shifty, small eyes really did resemble that giant rat’s.
She thought to herself, with quiet amusement, that fate really did have a way of bringing people back together, here they were, meeting again.
So the giant rat had worked up the nerve to steal Grandma Yun’s treasure in order to attend Lord Manshan’s feast.
The man in black asked, intrigued, “This swordswoman’s that skilled? Describe her to me, if I run into her, I’ll gladly swallow her whole for you!”
The giant rat sighed. “Just some little girl. Who’d have thought her swordsmanship would be so fierce.” His voice paused suddenly, and he sniffed at the air a few times. “Strange. I think I smell her scent.”
References[+]